Lansdale will be pilot location for revamped Montgomery County human services delivery system

Principals gather for a photo at the North Penn Community Health Foundation in Lansdale at the kickoff of a series on systems change. From left, Katya Smith, founder and CEO of Full Frame Initiative, Russell Johnson, president and CEO of North Penn Community Health Foundation, Laura Stravino, Chief Capacity Officer of Full Frame, and Tamela Luce, program officer, North Penn Community Health Foundation. Photo by Geoff Patton/Journal Register News Service.

HATFIELD TWP. — Lansdale Borough will serve as the home for one of Montgomery County’s four new locations as part of its revamped human services delivery system.

Josh Shapiro, chairman of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, made the announcement Thursday afternoon during a systems change workshop hosted by the North Penn Community Health Foundation.

Shapiro told a collection of nearly 70 representatives of local nonprofit organizations that the facility in Lansdale — as well as Norristown, Pottstown and Willow Grove — are on track to launch in April, then be rolled out throughout the county.

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The locations of each office have yet to be identified, though they will be announced shortly, according to Shapiro.

He said the county had already hired four “Navicates” — employees who will help residents navigate our system of human services and act as their advocate throughout the process — along with one supervisor.

The Navicates — who are currently undergoing training to understand people’s concerns and direct them to necessary assistance — will have a firm grasp of a wide variety of services offered throughout the county state and nation, according to Shapiro.

“They are some exceptional people,” he told the audience.

Following his remarks, Shapiro said the Lansdale office would be in a visible location with access to public transportation.

He also said the presence of the foundation in the North Penn region makes Lansdale an ideal location for a pilot office.

Shapiro told the workshop attendees that county officials would provide the agencies with a policy paper explaining how the relationship between the service organizations and the county would work within a couple weeks.

“We are going to be difference makers in people’s lives,” Shapiro told the audience. “We will show the Pennsylvania, and nation, how a public-private collaborative model can be utilized.”

The new model — introduced by Shapiro seven months earlier in a speech to the health foundation — eliminates need for constituents to travel to Norristown with a decentralized approach.

“We are going to be able to enhance our commitment to the people who need our help the most,” the commissioner told the audience.

In the October speech, Shapiro explained that the new constituent-focused system “will provide much easier access to human services; ensure cross-departmental collaboration and synergies; embrace innovation and technology to deliver services more quickly, locally and effectively; deliver exceptional value and service; and, most importantly, will result in better outcomes for those Montgomery County residents most in need.”

The first of three workshops featured a presentation by Katya Smith, the founder and CEO of the Full Frame Initiative, a Massachusetts-based, national nonprofit organization that works to break cycles of poverty and violence through systems change.